Isander, Anna

Abstract [en]

One of the Swedish preschools many tasks is to identify the needs of a child and to shape an activity suited to their needs. This identification means a lot of times that a child is weighed and valued despite that the curriculum clearly states that no assessment is to be done in the Swedish preschool. To develop a preschool able to face all children regardless of their individual needs it’s necessary to change focus from child assessment to instead look at the work and environment in the whole preschool. A development of the activity might be seen as a work in progress whose primary goal is to improve the quality of work in preschool. This study is a case study with the purpose of going into the depth and finding the unique of preschool assessment. This study is based on interviews with preschool teachers with the purpose of creating knowledge about the background to individual children’s prerequisites being valued, how to counter this, and instead evolve the work in preschool to be able to face all children no matter their needs. The result indicates there being a norm in preschool for what a child should be able to do and know, towards that, many children are assessed and valued. When a child’s behavior and/or development is perceived to fall outside this norm the child is described as a child in special needs. Respondents point out that by working with attitudes, ability to supervision by special educator, and small groups of children, would together contribute to individual assessment turned towards activities assessment. The resultsin this study puts focus on the head of preschool as a key person by creating possibilities for teachers to progress their work.